Wall Street Porn and Gelding, even

a gentle reminder.

 

Ruin: 'Dirtbag, Massachusetts: A Confessional', Isaac Fitzgerald appeals, that 'New man' idea. I am going to look at him and Michael Winkler (current reading) and 'Grimmish'. In a way I feel as if I have to understand 'us', men, though I am a very queer one. That males are running on a hugely diminished Y chromosome, apparently running at 3% of its former full glory, makes us worth a look at, that eclipsing.

 

Personally, I think it's a great thing. Anyway, it's happening, so why not take a look at how my gender is dealing with it, embracing trans and all that palaver, and hormone disruptors in the environment, that wondrous gelding? I don't really have interest in the male in 'crisis', more in the 'changing' that's going on, and the 'changeling', that new type of fairy, being generated.

 

Of course I see it in our parents too, I am even thinking of a certain other 'Bill'. It's not like it all suddenly began in 1990.

 

Sapolsky (In his wondrous book 'Behave') dealt with the passive male in his study of apes, and how when the rampaging alpha males were off on the warpath, attacking each other over territories, or whatever those 'loveable rogues' like to scrap over, peace was restored in the group. The result was that many of the more aggressive males were killed off in these skirmishes, leaving the more passive, 'friendly' males in an increasingly matriarchal group. The result was a rash of mutual grooming, and an increased interest in white goods and window treatments.

 

You see, there is hope. I love this 'awful edge' we find ourselves on. I am interested in there being some 'ingenuity' that might turn everything around. It's not as if it hasn't happened before. It might also just be a matter or perspective.

 

I suspect that nature naturally generates antidotes (and anecdotes too, it might appear), and these might first start to appear in Art and Literature (both of the afore-mentioned 'dotes', as nature would have it), following that old 'in the beginning was the Word' idea.

 

I do love me some canaries. I also like the idea of nature generating both Art and Literature, and concrete, and cities, for that matter, and all sorts of hormone disrupting plastics.

 

Rack: Here’s to a rash of mutual grooming. Interesting that you are looking at the notion of manhood, even in its decline. It is in an odd place. Jan apologized to me recently for mansplaining and it took me off guard. As if his raison d’etre had been outlawed. I never mind mansplaining as long as it’s interesting. I need it. There’s so much I don’t understand or know, so I’ve always loved my brain heavy men friends feeding me tid bits. But don’t tell.

 

Ruin: My feeling is that men are in decline and that needs describing too. I wouldn't want to do that if I felt that the decline was a problem, being indifferent to it might make it easier to describe. I can describe it because I am in decline too, that age and disease thing, and I am more or less indifferent to those two too. Perhaps I don't see it as decline, but more as a natural leavening out. I almost wrote "more of a natural evening out". I could sure do with one of those. LOL as we love to say nowadays.

Currently reading 'Grimmish', about a record breaking punchbag of a man who lived his life being beaten up, and beaten into second place, in a boxing ring, breaking all records for what someone could endure. Sound familiar?

Coetzee loved it, and if it's good enough for him, who am I to question it?

 

Rack: There is that obligatory conversation one has with one’s peers about the increased phenomenon of trans youth. What amazes me is how reactionary even the most liberal of people are. Actually, it doesn’t amaze me at all, I completely understand, but I stay silent as I know I can’t understand what is happening. I do think it is part of evolution, and not just a social construct.

I had a look on Google. Sounds intriguing. Someone should option it.

 

Ruin: Anyway, this geezer self published it, and is now finding himself universally lauded and put up for all sort of literary prizes. Isaac Fitzgerald sounds interesting too, same topic, masculinity fizzling out. I like his Jewish/Irish name.

Sorry dearest. I am ranting a bit. Sad to hear about Jan apologising about perhaps mansplaining. This is a universal problem, this self censorship. I can't imagine it being helpful as far as creativity is concerned at all. He must know you well enough to know you respect him, and he respects and loves you. I guess this self-policing is becoming like a reflex reaction.

 

Rack: I think we all have a lot of fear about how our behaviour is being policed. Are we racist? Are we transphobic? Are we elitist? Are we mansplaining? As you say, it’s not helpful and it doesn’t actually assist any of the issues it purports to protect. I fear we are in a very dark corner. Some days I find this very liberating. Not all days. Reading about the US government’s attitude to climate change is frightening. Also, Republican’s attitudes towards Anthony Fauci. Horrifying. He has just resigned. Bless.

 

Ruin: See Rack, I want you to outshine me, simply because you can.

 

I am slowly working it out, what I want to say, I mean. Yes, life is startlingly brief, and made more obvious in these pandemic days. I feel like it has taken two pandemics to wake me up, somewhat. I still hesitate, still prevaricate, but sometimes I get some of it down.

 

Time does feel like it's pressing, whilst I realise that at the same time, time doesn't press at all.

 

I am getting myself to that point of writing offline completely, it's been a struggle. I am, like everyone else, somewhat addicted to 'likes'. Flickr is my only 'social media', the only one I use. It's been a lifeline for a long time, long before this account, even. The place itself does seem to be winding down generally anyway.

 

And now we have the added delights of Monkeypox. What an interesting time we are living, and declining, through.

 

I am beginning to feel plate-ready, I must admit, though there is probably time for a little garnishing.

 

It’s strange, that idea that we might blame the monkey, or the place the monkey might have come from. It’s like blaming the canary in the coalmine. It makes no sense at all.

 

A bronze paperweight in the shape of a

sitting monkey holding her young in her lap.

China, late Ming period, 17th century

Height: 5 cm

 

猴

 

青銅鎮紙

坐母猴懷中抱著一隻幼猴形的銅製鎮紙

明後期, 十七世紀

H.: 5 厘米

 

Yes, to that idea of diversity. The way I see it now is that it is just all about economy, the economising of time. I suspect its something I learnt here in Pragmaland. I am never going to have those 17 hours to put to one side, to read a book. The audiobook of ‘Shuggie Bain’ is over 17 hours. It’s good to listen to, whilst getting on with those other rote duties. It’s also an exercise in filtering. I don’t want to write something like the wonderful ‘Shuggie Bain’, I don’t want to write a Dickensian novel of hardship and eventual redemption. The romanticisation of poverty, or reveries around it, is not really a ring I want to spar in, no matter how tinged with local colour it might be. Irish poverty was very different from English poverty in the 50s and 60s, or even Scottish poverty for that matter. It’s still interesting to see that there was a strong sectarian divide there too in Scotland, that catholic versus protestant thing. I think that the time for another ‘Angela’s Ashes’ is past. I don’t want it to be that form at all. So, I am learning something just from listening. I don’t want to go anywhere near a ‘Clarissa’ either, none of that palpitating bosomy me against the shackles of propriety. That was an easy one to see off, but it did take listening to over 300 pages. It gave me ideas about form, and that’s more than enough to take from any attempt to communicate. It led me to the idea that it has to be more radical even, that the epistolary can be included but not allowed to take over.

 

Victim schmictim, as they say, enough of all that. I am more interested in the full glorious comical horror of being, and how we maneuver our way around that, how we embrace our ‘foodiness’, how branded and sore we work our way through life towards that plate, that presenting ourselves to be eaten. It’s the consciousness of it happening that makes it wonderful. It celebrates nature’s awe-inspiring cannabilism.

 

We know it, we have been over it a thousand time, millions of times even. It’s in the Upanishad that we love:

 

“I am food, I am food, I am food! I am the eater of food, I am the eater of food, I am the eater of food! I am the poet, I am the poet, I am the poet! I am the first-born of the Right. Before the Devas I was in the centre of all that is immortal. He who gives me away, he alone preserves me: him who eats food, I eat as food.”

 

It’s a big one, I know.

 

Sapolsky talks about it in that interview with Huberman. It’s interesting to see them dance around it, and it introduces, at the end, Sapolsky’s latest musings and writings, his current struggle to find the words to convey something similar. He says he is progressing slowly on this new book of his. I imagine he is, it’s a huge idea, this landscape where ‘Free-Will’ doesn’t exist. That he somehow gets there through that other landscape of Neuroscience and his research into stress amongst primates, that 35 years of studying baboons in their natural habitat, is astonishing.

 

So here we are, wandering and wondering on our personal savannahs, you and I, amusing and disturbing ourselves into skirting depression and joy, picking over the carrion of centuries to continue a description of us and everything that went before us. It’s a complete folly, and we know it, but it is also joyous, this manufactured dirt-scratching in an attempt to imbue it all with some meaning. Yes, research can be too much of a distraction, and sometimes you have to sit down and add to it all. That’s not really a ‘have to’, it’s more an instinct. It might be arrogant to think that you have something to add to the pile, but it is also a realization that we all have exactly the same yearning and ability, and all do it anyway just through living, and eventually dying. We are all describers. But then, perhaps, the artist, or writer, or would be creator, has the effrontery to think that he or she (or dare I say it?) might be able to condense a certain aspect of what it is to be, so that it becomes a sort of mirror reflecting us back on ourselves. We all, all of what is, gift to each other those signs and signifiers, constantly, anyway. They are our personal vortexes.

 

You know I love winter, and I know you do too. We both know that life goes on beneath the soil, under the dirt, that mulcher. Covid throws it all somewhat more into that darkness, that fear of the boogeyman, our ‘plateworthyness’. I know the word doesn’t exist, but knowing some Dutch, I have learnt that words can be pushed together, can be forced to say what you mean. The Dutch, in their pragmatism, do this to language. It’s both their strength and their downfall, which could, of course, be said about absolutely everything.

 

Yes, to support systems, I am happy to buttress you as you buttress me. There will be more, but this will have to suffice for now. It’s still early morning and our library is begging me to disseminate it.

 

I accidentally, some years ago, smashed this beautiful Japanese plate into hundreds of pieces. That's how the universe works. It had managed to survive for a few hundred years before we cross-pollinated and it, unfortunately, encountered my arrogance.

 

John: Truthfully, whenever I self identify as an artist, I feel slightly phoney. However, what you wrote here has the ring of truth.

" But then, perhaps, the artist, or writer, or would be creator, has the effrontery to think that he or she (or dare I say it?) might be able to condense a certain aspect of what it is to be, so that it becomes a sort of mirror reflecting us back on ourselves. We all, all of what is, gift to each other those signs and signifiers, constantly, anyway. They are our personal vortexes."

The older I get, the briefer I realise life to be.

 

Ruin: Weaving here, John, in that habit I have, and moving this forward to the latest image.

 

Done